My Lover's Keeper
by oldfashionedromantic
Summary: On the night of Don Juan Triumphant Christine realizes who the true monster is and makes a different choice, will become alternate LND story, Erik/Christine.


Summary: On the night of Don Juan Triumphant Christine realizes who the true monster is and makes a different choice, will become alternate LND story, Erik/Christine.

My Lover's Keeper

Chapter 1

The Monster and the Man

"Qui est le monstre et qui est l'Homme?"

("Who is the Monster and who is the Man?")Victor Hugo: Notre Dame de Paris

**CHRISTINE'S POV**

_"You said yourself…he was nothing but a man…Yet while he lives…. He will haunt us till we're dead…""_

I looked up at Raoul, the handsome playmate that I had known so well. He was staring at me imploringly. Those blue eyes just as I remembered them, but yet so unlike him all the same, ardent and avarice with the blood-lust for one man. Oh this is my entire fault, if only I had not said those things on the roof, if only I hadn't kissed him. My poor Erik what have I condemned the poor man to; a man that loved me more than anything in the world. A man who wept when I gave him even the slightest of courtesies, like a 'thank you' or something like that, even a soft 'hello,' earned me his heartfelt thanks and kisses upon the hem of my dress and expresses of the most heartfelt emotions.

Raoul was still talking to me though I heard nothing he said. He turned my face to look at him, beautiful and golden with hair as fair as the sun. How handsome he was and how warm were his arms it felt almost too warm on my skin. I saw love and worry in his eyes, but that love…that familiarity was nothing compared to my maestro's unwavering devotion. His love was not as deep, not as great, and as heart-aching as my Angel's. Raoul would not give his life for me, not unconditionally at least whereas Erik would do just that. Erik would give me anything and everything I wanted, all I had to do was say, 'Erik could you give me…' and he would go to the end of the world to fetch it if he must. In fact one day, when he had asked me what I wanted for my birthday I made the mistake of saying that I wanted his heart from his chest in a diamond locket big enough to make a dog's collar. It was a joke of course, but as I soon discovered he meant to give me just that. Holding a medical scalpel in his hand meant for incision ready to cut into his chest and die to give me my wish.

"Erik! Erik!" I had cried running to him and wrenching the blade from him. "What are you doing?"

Erik had looked at me as though I were stupid and said in the most obvious voice, "Giving Christine what she wishes." He said, and showed me the huge diamond necklace wound around his wrist. It took me merely a few moments to persuade him that it was a jest, still he gave me a somber look, "Christine plays such games with poor Erik!, He deserves the death she ordered him, but yet she asked for something he already gave her! Only she can have Erik's heart!"

Tears streamed down my face as I looked at him, those blue eyes and thought of the beautiful silver eyes of the Angel of Music. Silver as the falling of raindrops on a spring day, the eyes of the other… the man I had meant to marry, blue as they were, eyes that had, at one time to me seemed of the most handsomeness as to make me swoon. They seemed lackluster to me now, almost cold in a way, and his hands which had been so soft and warm before now seemed colder now and almost evil. Perhaps it was my own thoughts causing this…

"Raoul, I can't do this…I can't betray the man who once inspired my voice… my Angel." I whispered sadly.

Raoul's eyes rolled upward and his voice sounded annoyed, "Christine for Christ's sakes, that _thing _is not an angel –hell- he is hardly human…"

"Please Raoul, I beg you don't…"

"No! You _are _going to sing tonight, we will catch that demon and then, you'll marry me." He said, orderly like a King demanding a whim.

"Please, don't make me…" I begged him.

Raoul said nothing, but grabbed the back of my neck and gave me a forced hard kiss; it was rough and hard…not like the kisses he had given me before. I pulled away from him and almost gagged at the sight of that goofy smile I had once found so charming.

"Raoul…I…"

"Damn it Christine stop protesting!" he shouted, causing me to flinch, and then his voice softened in volume but not in tone.

_"That Hell-Spawned Demon…_

_He's had us playing his game all along dear…"_

How I hated that endearment now, Raoul always called me that in nothing but fatherly persuasion. Erik would be dead tonight if I went on that stage…and I could not be responsible for that. But one look at my fiance and I knew that he did not understand, as far as he knew he was playing the white knight and my teacher the dragon that must be slain. He did not understand that this was the one thing I did not want, yes I wanted Erik to let me be but to think of him as dead? To have the voice and the unrequited love's heart silenced forever, the mere idea was just unthinkable. But of course Raoul would never understand that, and why should he? I had told him that Erik was my very nightmare incarnate and so the lover sought to protect me from the thing that had frightened me the most.

But now at last I understood that I did not want Erik gone from my life and that my foolish girlhood dreams were over and that now I had the power to end a man's life. It was a power that I never wanted in the first place and the man who would die was worse, the one that loved me more than life itself. But Raoul was never going to listen to reason and it was my fault, I had always known he was an arrogant self-righteous man and always had been. Ever since we had been playing games as little children playing games by papa's cottage he had been this way. He had always been the one to slay our imaginary monsters and I had been the helpless damsel in distress awaiting him to come rescue me like the spoiled little princess I was.

As I looked at him now for the first time I realized that he was not what I wanted and what a revelation it was to know that I sometimes beauty was only skin deep. I did not want him to rescue me anymore, I just wanted him to let me live my life and be the woman I knew I could be without having to ask his permission or seek his approval. Not have to worry about what a future with a man like this would hold when i already knew what it would mean. I knew that no matter how much he loved me now when the consequences of that marriage came around he would rightly resent them and me. He was above me from where society stood and all this was a beautiful dream. One that I had to wake up from and had done so fully now seeing that it would never have worked with Raoul and now had to break his heart to boot.

"No…I cannot aid you in the murder of a man who has done you no harm." I said at last meeting his gaze with my own.

His blue eyes were frightening. I had never seen him like this. When he spoke again his voice was hard almost brutal. I cowered back from him and he advanced on me with none-too-gentle steps. Thudding with finality as though each step marked off the ticking of Erik's time on this earth but the voice in which he spoke next was soothing and gentle as he tried to reason with me. Not that there could be any reason to murder someone but I was sure that in his bloody mind there was one whatever it may have been. But the next words out of his mouth were lies and I knew they were just to get me to be frightened into doing what he wished, he was trying to play to my trauma of seeing what the Phantom was capable of.

_"He kills without a thought…_

_He murders all that's good…_

_You know you can't refuse…"_

This was not my little play-fellow; he had been replaced by this madman, a madman worse than my Angel if he had been mad to become so in love with me. I had thought that Erik was a monster and I had told Raoul that much, but now I was beginning to wonder who the real monster was, Erik was ugly…yes, so very ugly but then he had never killed someone out of jealousy, only out of protection. If, indeed he'd killed anyone here to begin with for the verdict at the courts involving the death of poor Joseph Bouquet was, "natural suicide." It hit me then, hard as a punch to the stomach, there was no crime of which Erik had been convicted. Raoul had no reason to want Erik dead other than the eager jealousy which ate whatever decency that my once-upon-a-time sweetheart possessed.

"No Raoul, I won't….do this…" I said.

Raoul reached down and grabbed me by the arm, pulling me upward to him and, in the coldest, harshest voice I had ever heard, "You are to be on that stage in ten minutes or else!"

"Or else what?" I asked. He offered me a secretive smiled and disappeared behind the door that closed with a finalizing click of the lock.

"No, Raoul wait!" I called, then I sank to me knees, "things have changed Raoul

I sat there in the chapel, crying like the child that I was and then I thought I saw a shadow reminding me of the man who I condemned to death. Yet I knew that it was the shadow of my own thoughts and daydreaming of the man who would truly die for the love of me. Me who is so unworthy as a cockroach, me who would betray him to the officers waiting for the man with a target pretty much printed on him. I held my face as I thought of my father and how he used to read _Le Belle et Le Brute _to me on Christmas Eve.

I being at the tender of six did not understand how a beautiful Heroine like she could ever love a man who looked as the Beast did even if he was a prince.

"Father, he is so ugly, so very ugly, and oh so cruel! How can a girl such as her love someone as he even if he is a prince?"

"Ah but my Christine, that is the magic of the story, the young Belle, beautiful as she is saw what was underneath the horrid exterior of it all." Daddy said, with an indulgent smile.

"Oh," I had said, trying to make out like I understood him, though I had no clue what he was talking about.

The blank look on my face gave me away because my father went on, "It's not what's on the outside, but the inside that counts." When I looked at him dumbly again, he laughed and said, "You'll understand when you're older. Now toddle off Lotte, time for bed and when you wake Father Christmas will bring you happy things!"

My father would be ashamed of me, of how shallow I have become when he read to me and wrote for me all those fantastic stories about the beauty underneath. I did not know what was wrong with me, the man did nothing to me at all and here I was going to get him killed. Oh how selfish I now when I at last understood I was giving him over to men who would kill him for no reason other than a filthy purse-string. Money was indeed the root of all evil and so is ignorance, its ever-faithful companion. People always sought to destroy what they did not understand and I was no different. I had coaxed Raoul into thinking that Erik was a monster and promised him my hand. Led him to believe that I was terribly frightened of Erik. When in fact I knew that Erik was not as evil as he was made out to be, and so with a heavy heart I made my choice, however wrong it was.

There was still time to change it though and that's just what I was planning to do. Feeling around the floor I found a little black nail which I pressed down to open a trapdoor with a rope dangling from its entrance. Grabbing the rope I slid down into the darkness and after what seemed like an eternity found the door to the _Rue Scribe _that served as Erik's private courters, and discovered the door was ajar. How odd, Erik never left this door open; it was a room I was forbidden to enter. Still all the better for me to warn him. But when I stepped inside I could not restrain a horrified shriek, there lay Erik, his medical scalpel in his left hand, a note crumpled in his right, blood pooling all around him as it oozed from his wrist.


End file.
